I went through a lot of phases of stuff I was into when I was a kid. Sharks, the violin, the guitar, the bass guitar, painting (that was a rough one). There’s too many to list, but there was one that has stayed, as well as guitar and bass. Bond, James Bond.

I was eight years old when I remember getting into the Bond films. I had watched a few films before, but I never got into them until that point in my life. It was one random Saturday, and Die Another Day was on TV. The opening was intense. Bond in a helicopter and planting a bomb in his suitcase as it landed in an army base in North Korea. I was hooked and filled with anticipation to see what would happen with the bomb. It had the bomb exploding, the base exploding, a hovercraft chase, and Bond being captured and held hostage in North Korea all before the opening credits. For the next two hours, I was watching in awe as the film played out in front of me.

After that day I would start to check the TV mag each week to see when a Bond film would be on and get excited for when it would be on. Sometimes it played the very next Saturday, but most of the time it was a month or two wait, so after a few months I did the only thing that seemed right. I begged my granddad to buy me a DVD player and to start getting the DVDs. The first one I bought and watched was The Man With The Golden Gun. It was educational as I learnt what a third nipple was.

Fast forward to when I was eleven, and I owned all the DVDs up to that point and had enough Bond knowledge to give a TED talk about the subject. So what made it stand out to me? The easy answer is that I loved films, especially ones with British accents, when I was a kid. It made it more enjoyable; I was not thinking about being an actor back then, but the seeds were starting to be sown.

On another level, it was a way for my imagination to run wild. It had me imagining what it would be like if I were Bond. I later found the Alex Rider books, which are sort of Bond Jr. type, which increased my obsession more. He was jetting off to different countries and saving the world in different ways. I could forget about the world and tune myself out of reality. Bond was more fun than reality.

On another note, I could see myself as Bond. Not playing him, but how he is, but a very, very, VERY tame version. He was also alone, and that’s how I felt most of the time when I was young. He always had a remark for everything and made a lot of one-liners and jokes, which I found myself doing to ease awkwardness due to not understanding social cues, another sign I missed that I was neurodivergent.

I do prefer the older Bond films, as they are the most goofy and sometimes come across as more comedy than action.